


i left my pretense at home

by sovery



Series: Twist and Twine [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Muggle, F/M, Female Harry, Female Harry Potter, Modern Era, now with more depression and less morality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-02 19:51:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12733173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sovery/pseuds/sovery
Summary: In honor of the remix of the Lorde song, here is a remix of my original two-shot.Grief does funny things to people, Harrie thinks. It made her brittle, instead of kind, careless, instead of careful.





	1. you're a runaway train

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Homemade Dynamite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11717637) by [sovery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sovery/pseuds/sovery). 



> It's a really good song, you guys, gals, and non-gender-binary people. I don't have much else to say by way of defence.

If you had asked her, a year ago, if she was a good person, Henrietta Lily Potter would have probably told you she thought so, most of the time. Perhaps thrown in a joke about how that was only the case when she got enough sleep.

It wasn't until a few numb and bitter months after her parents' death that it occurred to her that any goodness she had possessed wasn't innate, but mimicked and learned from the two people who had always been constants in her life, and who were no longer there, here, anywhere. It occurred to her, as she lashed out at friends and acquaintances, and became venomously angry at the polite, route expressions of sympathy she heard near-daily, that her parents probably would have been disappointed in her, despite their own tempers. It was one of the few times she felt an odd kind of relief about her own lack of relief; with no metaphorical fluffy clouds from which to peer down upon her from, her parents couldn’t be disappointed in her, no matter how comforting that kind of guilt was. Her parents, blown into bits in a still-unexplained act of domestic terrorism, couldn’t be anything. They no longer were.

And so she become an orphan at twenty-one. The state deemed her an adult and so she was left to deal with death duties and her mother’s book collection and the flat in Islington and the family home in Gloucestershire and the calls from reporters, circling like the vultures they were.

They handled the funeral of course. A show of unity and solemnity in the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack since the 7/7 attacks. Harrie didn't attend, too furious and confused and incapable.

It turned out that grief did not bring out the best in her. It made her brittle, instead of kind, careless, instead of careful.  
In the months after she made her apologies and arranged to return to her course after her leave of absence. She was, for the most part, forgiven. It did not make her any happier.

  
***

And life moved on, at least for everyone else. She found herself torn between Neville, on the one hand, who was perhaps the only individual who had any idea what she was going through (even if his grief was so - appropriate. So polite) and those of her friends who were too insensitive to try and share her grief, those who pretended that her self-imposed absence from the social scene was nothing more than a blip. She rather liked their awkward cheerfulness, which quickly shifted to blitheness as she pretended that she wasn't a hollow automaton. And if she was more inclined to make cruel comments, if she drank too much, if she sometimes smiled at nothing in particular because the alternative would be to cry, to scream in shared taxis and or at dinners out and nights dancing then, well, they pretended not to notice.

She chooses to go on holiday with some friends from school, island hopping in the Mediterranean. It’s a good choice, she thinks at the time. There is little enough to distinguish the unhealthy habits of an emotionally volatile orphan and a shameless would-be socialite, particularly when it comes to the excessive amounts of alcohol they consume. It feels safe, in a numb-funny kind of way.

But as was so often the case, at twenty-two, Harrie overestimated her own ability to keep herself safe, in spite of everything - in spite of the 21st century proliferation of mass-murderers.

  
***

  
She's lost count of her G&Ts and the various shots, and the lack of food in her stomach is probably not helping. Inexplicably vegetarian for the past year, she is well aware that chips are not an adequate dinner. And yet.

Water is definitely necessary, she decides, and announces. Padma comes with her, leaving Parvati & Lavender engaged in a half-hearted round of 'which one of these peasants would I deign to fuck' or something along those lines. The game was more fun when they were younger, Harrie thinks, which is silly, because the boys - the men - are much more attractive now that they have reached their twenties.

She downs her water and feels marginally less queasy, and also very tired and as though she is not even there, amid the smoke and the flashing lights and the thumping base and the hands someone puts around her waist that even now she twists out of, only deciding at the last minute not to punch the (inevitable) man in the face, some moderately attractive local (she supposes) looking offended (that what, she didn't drop her panties for him then and there?). Honestly.

"Fuck off," she says, instead. Succinct.

"Harrie!" Padma hisses, probably embarrassed and wow, she really just cannot bring herself to pretend to care and instead smiles tightly and walks quickly away.

"God, I am so sorry," Harrie hears and as she glances back she thinks she sees Padma batting her eyelashes at the boy (so she supposes he must not be bad looking) and she continues moving in the direction she left Parvati and Lav anyway. She has no reason to stop.

When she reaches them she pauses, confused. It takes her a long moment to think, _oh, that_. Lavender is leaning in close to her closest friend with big, emotional eyes and it occurs to her that it would be better not to interrupt. She waits anyway, for a long moment, wondering where she ought to go. Not to Padma, she thinks, with no small amount of irritation.

Perhaps she will have another drink - or perhaps she will leave. She ought to. Spends a moment contemplating logistics, taxis, and the location of her hotel key.  
Stumbling out on impractical spiked heels she intends to remove the moment she’s in a taxi, she bumps into something – someone, and shoves him aside with perhaps less care than she ought to, before vaulting over the remaining half-a-dozen stairs. Manages not to fall on her face or break an ankle, and all while wearing little more than spandex shorts and an absurdly low-cut dress. Small triumphs.

As she straightens, someone grabs her wrist. It appears to be that kind of night and she turns only to be momentarily surprised into silence by the irritated and apparently unintoxicated man who is looking at her with so much impersonal displeasure.

"Why don't you continue your quarter-life crisis elsewhere?" says tall dark and overdressed.

She smiles at him, an empty vessel, all teeth. "Well, I'm trying, but you're in my way."

He raises his eyebrows and gestures with mock gallantry, making a path more easily than seems reasonable, given the general drunkenness. His attempts at intimidation might actually work.

She sweeps past him with a twirl and a sloppy salute. " _Goodbye, and go fuck yourself_ , Sir" she says in slurred and archaic Greek. She does not wait for his reaction, before hailing a taxi.

  
***

It is perhaps inevitable that she would see him in her hotel lobby. This is why you can’t have nice things she thinks – judging by the cut of his suit she’s have never bumped into him at a hostel or an airbnb. He catches her looking at him and his mouth twists downward.

Still drunk and mildly chastened, she is silent as he joins her in the elevator. She’s on 8. He is on the top floor, naturally. They wait in silence as the doors hang open just long enough to annoy. As they close, she hears his crisp, clear voice say

“If you’re going to advertise what a wretched mess you are, you might try and be less obvious about it, girl,” adding the last in accented Greek. So he did understand the drunken results of Harrie’s eight years of classics. Bloody marvelous.

"It's about momentum," she says, quietly, and in English. "Adapt or die, dance until your iron shoes burn you up or out, and stop for no one and –“ she falters at the ding of the elevator “nothing."

On the second floor they are joined by some louche middle-aged man in a crumpled suit, who leers at her. She sneers right back.

He jabs the already-depressed button for her floor. Fucking wonderful.

Moments later they arrive and she waits, preferring not to exit first, but he gestures for her to go. A tight smile, and no one moves. The doors move to close and then her tall, rude companion holds it open, stepping out, before she makes the impulsive decision to follow. The would-be Gerard Depardieu nearly gets caught in the elevator before he too sticks a hand in the door, preventing it from closing.

He seems surprised and embarrassed to see the two of them across the hallway, looking at him. She feels a rush of loathing, and briefly, quietly, enjoys a little fantasy where he does follow her back to her room and she strangles him, or drowns him in the bathtub. Though really, where would the water come from? 

Instead, he mutters some excuse, slinking back in and jabbing at the buttons. There is a beat of silence after the doors close and he slinks off to wherever he actually belonged.

She turns to find the man from the club looking at her pensively. He does not react when she looks at him, unembarrassed to be caught looking at her.

"Thanks," she says, after a moment. He looks a little surprised at that and rubs his jaw, in an absent kind of way.

"Think nothing of it," he says - crisp London accent, but for some other thing lurking underneath. He steps forward to press the Up button and she takes a few steps in the direction of her room.

"You should be more careful," he adds. Harrie turns to face him.

"I'm careful enough," she says. "All kinds of horrible things happen and you can't predict more than half of them."

He shrugs, as if in agreement.

"Lock your deadbolt, all the same."

"Yes," she agrees, as he steps into the elevator, turning as he leaves.

  
***

Strange girl, that one, he thinks. She's in the middle of a controlled sort of burn, self-aware enough to know that she's self-destructing, or at least pretending to herself that she is. Rude in a way that suggests it isn't natural to her. Tom wonders why he bothered intervening.

It's not like him to care. A moment and he thinks, ruefully, that he'd like to sleep with her himself. She's a pretty thing, all sharp angles and dark curls, this girl on the 8th floor. He recognizes her too, now that he's seen her in better light. Harriet Potter. He'd seen a picture of her in the papers, after the bombing of the Lib Dem conference. She was James and Lily Potter's only daughter, and she was still recognizable from the out of date family portrait that had been printed in the memorials.

He wonders if he should try and bump into her again. He could get someone to hack into the hotel's booking system, he thinks, and decides against it. He'll charm the girl at the front desk in the morning, if he's even interested by then.

Stripping off his clothes automatically, he sets an alarm and brushes his teeth, mechanically completing the routine of preparing for bed in an overpriced hotel room.

How to go about seducing someone miserable and self-aware, he wonders, before dismissing the thought. He will likely have forgotten her by morning.

 

 He doesn't.

***

After a week spent with the slightly mysterious but easily google-able Tom M. Riddle, Harrie is feeling more relaxed than she has in ages. She might still think grief-sex is bullshit, but the endorphins are a heady relief from general misery. It is this that she considers while trying not to let on to her friend that though it’s nearly noon she’s still hardly left bed. She has done remarkably little but sleep, eat, and fuck over the past four days, with small interludes to sunbathe, read, and swim.

It’s not a sustainable lifestyle, but Harrie knows this, and Hermione is being annoying. She cares, Harrie reminds herself. Trouble is, she's sick of dealing with other people's care, and sick of feeling guilty for it. Turning back to the conversation, she finds herself unable or unwilling to contain a snort when Hermione suggests there is something wrong with her for wanting to stay with a man she hardly knows.

"Sex addiction is just a made-up term for men who can't keep it in their pants and get caught harassing their secretaries or cheating on their wives with prostitutes" she says, voice as tart as an under-ripe cherry.

Tom comes in quickly enough to catch her sentence and gives a laugh, disguised as a cough. The grin he gives her when she catches her eyes and raises her brows is positively filthy.

She covers the speaker with a cupped hand.

"I'm not wrong," she points out to him.

"Absolutely right," he smirks, amused. He strips off his shirt and she is distracted still, by the rippling of the muscles in his back and arms as he pads to the closet to look for something else.

Hermione knows Harrie is distracted, and tells her so in a voice equal parts exasperation and concern. She experiences a brief flash of guilt after she hangs up, and then Tom distracts her again, asking idly if she’ll accompany him to Crete for another two days.

Her friend is somewhat off the mark. Harrie is neither infatuated or addicted. He is charming but clearly arrogant, clever and interesting and a fascinating conversationalist, argumentative in the kind of way she enjoys, but she doesn’t imagine that he is secretly sweet, or that he sees her as anything more than a brief fling.

She does like sleeping with him though, more than she's ever liked it before.

He doesn't mind that she's needy and rough and leaves nail marks all over his back. For his part, he leaves faint hand-prints on her hips and dark purple hickeys where her neck meets her shoulders. He pushes her up against walls and he's surprisingly strong for a slim man, his height hiding deceptive strength and muscle. She likes it - it's oddly comforting, his hand on her neck, or tight in her hair, no space between her back and his chest. It grounds her in the present, all sensation, no thought.

  
She knows very well it won’t last.


	2. unbuckled for the ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inexplicably, it lasts - whatever it is between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2018. Thanks for the kind words and kinder patience.

Tom’s not sure exactly what is so appealing about Harrie, because she is beautiful, definitely, but there isn’t a shortage of beautiful women in the circle he moves in. The fact that he enjoys her company, in spite of the countless small inconveniences her presence necessitates, is probably more surprising than the fact that he desired her, but she’s not demanding of his time. And while he might be a bit of a sadist, he doesn’t get off on the fact that she’s still grieving – though the odd and terribly ironic coincidence of her presence in his life does make him wonder, if for only half a second, if perhaps there is some kind of higher power pulling strings. If so, it is as capricious, indifferent to human suffering, and as prone to cruel jokes as he had always speculated it would be.

And perhaps it is paranoia, but he takes extra care to ensure that she is not in a position to accidently stumble on the dubious legality of his activities. So far as Harrie is aware, he is a serial entrepreneur who also inherited some stodgy shipping business from his father. Tom is an excellent liar. And he truly doesn’t want to talk business to her anyway – he does more than enough of that without her. So with a charming, rueful smile, he explains that he knows he works too much, and would prefer not to spoil their summer. Instead they argue about politics, talk about traveling, about London, about nothing in particular. They avoid speaking about their families, his work, and her education. He neglects to mention that he dislikes being reminded how much younger she is.

He also choses not to say that he would hate to have to dump her into the ocean, easy as it would be for yet another suspicious death to be dismissed as a suicide in the midst of a family tragedy. People take offense at that sort of thing.

Hell, something in him takes offense at the idea. It would be such a terrible waste, for reasons he can only half-articulate.

No, he really cannot understand why he is as fond of her company as he is.

She’s quick-witted, though not as clever as he is, and proud, and reckless, and very alive. For someone so young, she is remarkably self-possessed. He can admire that. She has an extremely dark sense of humor that is only half-expressed aloud, and half-hidden in small, private smiles. He’s taken to provoking her, out of curiosity, and takes more delight in them than he ought to.

Harrie calls him awful once, and only once, in response to a cruel (but accurate) assessment of a former colleague of her mother’s. He laughs too much, and she blinks at him with those astonishingly green eyes, before he tugs her into the ladder of his ribs, runs a hand over her side, and she relaxes into him, amused despite herself, and more at ease than she really should be.

Tom had assumed their little assignation would come to an end quickly and naturally. Instead he decides to prolong his working holiday and make a few personal visits to a handful of legal and illicit businesses around the Mediterranean that might benefit from the inspiration his presence tends to provoke. He is not fool enough to pretend it has nothing to do with Harrie. Nor is he blind to the fact that she is more than halfway done with her degree in Medicine, and that she will eventually be returning to Oxford.

So he asks, casually, when he thinks she would be least capable of lying to him.

***

"I should probably aim for mid-October," Harrie says, unhappy.

“Well, don't look so pleased about it," he says, glancing over at her, head propped up on a folded arm. His hair is mussed and his eyes are half-lidded. When he looks like that it does things to her. He's fine after, like, fifteen minutes, she muses, shivering in anticipation. Maybe they can fuck again.

He runs a knuckle down her side, tapping her hipbone, drawing her back to his comment. She gives a shrug with some difficulty. She does not become breathless.

"I'm out of step with my friends in my year," she says. She smiles bitterly. "Out of touch, too."

He mmms in a way that means for her to continue. She fixes her gaze on the ceiling.

"I just don't give a shit anymore," she says. "It was a nice idea, helping people, surviving those mad hours at the NHS and all that, and it would have been something new for me, and now I just" she breaks off. She just doesn't care.

And, some awful, dark part of her thinks, she inherited a pile of money from her parents, in addition to her trust, in addition to their multi-million pound home in Notting Hill. It's not like she needs to work - now that she has no purpose.

"I've probably forgotten everything, anyway," she says.

"Really?" he says, sounding doubtful.

"No. I'm really fucking brilliant," she says, smiling sourly. She has an excellent memory and even better intution, and though school had never been her entire focus, she had always done well. It was no more unfair than any number of truths in her life. Harrie turns to face Tom, and can't quite make out his expression, though it is, if nothing else... intense. He is quiet for a moment as he gazes at her. She thinks it's sort of funny, how he's never been self-conscious about his scrutiny.

Then again, he doesn’t seem the sort to hold other people's opinions in high regard.

"What else would you do then?" he asks, casually. She is still sour - bruised fruit - she thinks fleetingly - and watches as he reaches over to his nightstand, straightening up against the headboard as he shakes out one of his expensive cigarettes. Tom looks over at her to ask wordlessly if she wants one.

"Sure," she says, wiggling up and bending her knees. She tugs the discarded sheets over her legs to keep them warmer and watches as he lights two cigarettes. Particular as he is, he only smokes one a day. She's only seen him have them in bed once - he says he doesn't want the room to always smell of them, but this time he makes no move to open the little windows.

She takes the offered cigarette and has a long draw, sucking nicotine into her lungs. As always, she thinks that her mum would have hated it. Parental hypocrisy - she had smoked too, when she was young.

After she exhales, Harrie turns to find him watching her again, waiting for an answer.

"I don't know," she says. She lacks purpose. Also family, a decent therapist, and emotional health. Tom continues to watch her. She should probably find it a little creepy, but she can’t quite manage the energy. He’s really something – she just wishes she knew what he was thinking. Instinctively, she feels as though it is important, crucial even, that she know. That she know him.

***

In the end Harrie does go back to Oxford, for lack of anything better to do. She leases overpriced accommodation to ensure she's got some privacy, and doesn't bother arriving until a few days before term starts. She prepares halfheartedly for collections. She also buys a railcard. She will be traveling to London frequently.

She had not expected things to last with Tom - they never outright discuss it, but even as the summer draws to a close and they both return to England, even as they arrange to see each other and he so casually collects her phone number, address, and schedule, she expects him to just – not call her she supposes. The thought hurts, but it’s a good hurt, throbbing like a bruise. Like a love bite. It is an absence she can anticipate from a man she spends all her time with but hardly knows.

Whatever is between them does last, in spite of her logical assumptions – it lingers like unusually warm weather that makes her deeply happy to live in a house that actually has air conditioning, even if she can hardly bare to see the chaise lounge unoccupied, her father’s dreadful photographs, her mother’s books, unopened. It is so much more pleasant to spend nights at his loft, amid the new, modern furniture and the old books.

Tom does not help her move in. He did make a call when she was frustrated trying to find a flat that she wouldn’t have to share, and let her know, not a few hours later, that he had found something for her. He looks around it approvingly when he first visits, after Harrie’s finished hauling up her own boxes and (sort of) organizing her closet. It's far too nice for a student, but she doesn't really feel like one anymore.

When he leaves her on Sunday he leaves with red stripes up and down his back, and leaves her hand-prints and hickeys both. Harrie has hardly had time to dread turning up to labs and lectures. It’s a help.

She visits Tom’s big, impersonal flat in Soho on weekends. They never discuss their relationship. Love is never mentioned.

She considers it, one evening, alone in his big glass shower, rugburn on her knees.

She doesn't love him, she tells herself. The possibility of loosing him, however...

But it's not denial, she insists internally. He has been a pleasant addition to an empty life - an interesting, clever individual in his own right - not just a fuck, anyway, but she never imagines them as anything but what they are, whatever that is. Harrie doesn't imagine the future anyway – why would Tom merit an appearance?

***

As November approaches its end it occurs to Tom that despite consciously deciding that he would never be anyone's goddamn boyfriend, he has effectively shacked up with a student, at age 32. He's never promised anyone fidelity, either, but he's practicing it regardless, after a fashion. They spend their weekends together, and increasingly, their weeknights, when she can work around her labs and her lectures. Tom has the luxury of making his own schedule, but there are few substitutes more … motivating, than his presence, he has found. Still, he’s capable of delegating, which means that he sees her frequently, if not nearly as often as he would like.

There is but an hour and a half between them, Tom rationalizes. It's not as though he's been tested or anything. Though that's not exactly true, he realizes, a little disgusted. He'd taken a trip that brought him to New York for a week, and instead of pulling one of the pretty women who hung around the lobbies in expensive hotels he had gotten himself off while thinking of what else but Harrie.

He'd like to see her in nice lingerie, he thinks. Something expensive and obscene, her lips bruised and wet around him or maybe all undone across the desk he’s stolen from his father.

It’s a pretty picture, and he lingers on it, wonders if she liked bruises and a hand around her throat, if she liked being pinned down, occasionally, before her parents died (before him), and he thinks it would be better if he didn’t know. The problem, Tom finds, with having a criminal empire, but also access to the internet, is that it is just too easy to ferret out information that you would rather not know. Harrie has had two boyfriends and he would like nothing more than arrange for an ‘accidental’ overdose, or a tragic fall, for the both of them.

It’s absurd – he’s never begrudged any of his partners their past experiences, and those brief, adolescent relationships were hardly a threat. And yet, with her, the thought of someone else wringing those delicious, breathy moans, those amused half-smiles, that intoxicating attention – the almost innocent wide-eyed looks that come when someone can really fascinate her – it makes him long to crush anyone else who had been granted them – to blot out their existence, their memory.

Tom is almost sure he isn’t capable of love – the really irrationally devoted kind. It’s more common than most people think. There are plenty of people like him, people with sociopathic tendencies, or narcissists, who need attention and admiration but share his inability to really give a fuck about anyone else. He has no illusions about his own lack of empathy, his capacity for cruelty.

He is almost sure.

***

How oddly fierce-looking, and finely-boned she is, he thinks, in a post-coital haze, content as he’s capable of being. Harrie is almost never soft or sweet, even if she is automatically, reflexively kind to those around her, and he wonders at her curious intensity. She isn’t brittle, she isn’t broken, but she isn’t normal. She’s referenced it, in a self-deprecating way, whilst mentioning her inability to get on with some of her acquaintances in her year – some annoying boy named Colin (Colin Creevy – aged 22 – resident of 14 Solsy Lane in Dover) had nearly cried at her indifference to what Tom cannot believe were anything but clumsy romantic overtures. Harrie had sounded bewildered – but also irritated. That incident had apparently turned most of her fellow students against her, though she still had friends at other colleges, and the younger sister of one of her childhood friends. He took heart in the fact that she had seemed more resigned than upset.

Tom is more than happy to tell her to abandon them. It’s probably a result of his childhood, but he’s very covetous, very jealous, of the things that he considers his. And Harrie is his, he thinks, still running a hand up and down her naked back. He should probably tell her that.

And yet – indifference is a lure for some, and he’s never actually had a heart-to-heart with any of his previous lovers. Over the past few years he has done well enough with women who are infatuated but ultimately more concerned with themselves. It’s easier. They enjoy his looks, are interested in his wealth, and pleased with the unemotional give-and-take that characterizes their romps between the sheets.

It occurs to him that he hasn’t been seen with a woman in a while. May, he thinks. A fundraiser at the Black’s country pile. Mixed company, who would have asked him where his wife or girlfriend was, and who would have been patronizing had he been alone. He had taken Catherine – she had been a model-cum-designer and she had dropped him as soon as she realized he had no intention of marrying.

Bellatrix was cruel to her, as Bella often was (Rodolphus more resigned than jealous at this point, but Tom was tired of Bella’s fanaticism and would rather have her husband’s loyalty, since hers was all but assured at this point). He would have to ensure Harrie wasn’t similarly mocked – though she could probably hold her own.

And yet, he thinks, the prospect of exposing Harrie, lovely, clever, nosy, assertive, Harrie to his associates made him more than apprehensive.

She grumbles against his chest as he blinks down at her in amusement.

“What?”

Harrie props her chin on his chest with just a little more force than is necessary.

“I can hear you thinking,” she accuses, sooty lashes lowered over arresting green eyes. She’s not really angry.

“I always am,” he replies, “always.” Harrie exhales against his bare chest and drapes her forearm across his chest. A bit of pressure against his ribcage and her head is raised slightly.

 "Why does that sound so  - so _ominous_ " she half-rasps, the last word emphasized with a slightly teasing lilt. _Why_ _indeed_? he thinks. And then,  _oh._


End file.
